Position in chronology
Sennacherib 201
Translation — scholar edition
RINAP 3(1) Sennacherib, king of the world, king of Assyria, the one who fashi[oned image(s) of (the god) Aššur] and the great gods: With baked bricks from a (ritually) pure kiln, I [had] the Step Gate [of the Palace in Baltil (Aššur) built] anew [and I] rai[sed (it) as high as a mountain].
Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 3 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[m]⸢d30⸣-PAP.MEŠ-⸢SU MAN⸣ ŠÚ MAN KUR aš-šur ⸢DÙ⸣-[ìš ṣa-lam AN.ŠÁR] / ⸢u DINGIR.MEŠ GAL.MEŠ É?.muš?-la?⸣-lu [šá É.GAL bal-til.KI]1 / ⸢ina a-gúr-ri UDUN KÙ-ti eš-šiš ú⸣-[še-piš-ma] / [ú]-⸢zaq⸣-[qir₆ ḫur-šá-niš]
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of Sennacherib, edited by A. Kirk Grayson & Jamie Novotny (RINAP 3, 2012–2014). ORACC text Q004006.
Attribution
Image: Created by A. Kirk Grayson, Jamie Novotny, and the Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period (RINAP) Project, 2014. Lemmatized by Jamie Novotny, 2013. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/rinap/Q004006/..
Translation excerpted from Grayson, A.K. & Novotny, J. 2012–2014. The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704–681 BC). RINAP 3. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap3/Q004006/.
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One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.